Joshua Podro was born Joshua Podrushnik in Russia. After serving in the First World War and working as a journalist in New York he emigrated to England where he ran a press-cuttings agency. In 1936 he was elected one of the secretaries of the British section of the World Jewish Congress and in 1937 was a member of the Zionist Organisation Executive at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Geneva. Joshua Podro was a distinguished scholar of Hebrew and Aramaic. After his death, his large library of Judaica was donated to Leo Baeck College.

Joshua Podro was an expert on the Hebrao-Aramaic aspects of primitive Christianity. He also co-authored with Graves Jesus in Rome: a historical conjecture (1957).